Sunday, September 02, 2012

So there's Voltech, a comedic and dapper young blogger-about-town (town being cyberspace, dapper being - probably still dapper). And he goes and throws me into one of these sort of "questions about me" kind of meme-quiz-chainletter things, because he must defeat 11 blogs to achieve immortality, and for one reason or another he keeps reading things I write.

Clearly a madman.

Now, back in the days when people were still like "Do you use email?" rather than "What's your email?" you would get chain letters in email like all the time, instead of just cordoning that stuff off to your Facebook wall and then humanely setting it on fire. You know which ones I mean, the ones that are all:

"Make ten wishes, post them here for everyone, then send this to ten more people within a week and the FIRST WISH ON THE LIST will come true! Fail in this, and your soul is forfeit. You will become a wretched shadow of a creature, having swallowed and become every single thing that you hated, but you will not be permitted to die, not until you have seen all that you love grow withered and twisted by your own hand, and every trace of your existence in this life has bled out on the universe's piss-stained bathroom floor. IT WILL HAPPEN UNLESS YOU OBEY."

And then you'd be like, "Oh shit, I have to send this thing. Why? Why would my friends send me these veiled threats to comply with their groupthink or suffer? How is that a friendly action?

Sensing a call to adventure, I became one of the world's first Chain EmailSin Eaters. I encouraged everyone to send me their chain letters so I could purposely not forward them. It would become my life's work to absorb and conquer all the bad karma spread by those viral memes. The sender would be absolved, and I would wrestle with whatever demons attacked me as a consequence. And I did. But that is a tale for another day.

Because of my sacred duties, I am actually sort of terrible at self-promotion, you know? It's the cross I bear. But what I can do without violating the tenets of my order, is to post a list of bloggers on Blogger blogging bloggy blogs that I think you should check out. Here is your menu; please enjoy, and let me know if you need anything.

Into Survival by Joey Comeau. Horrifyingly good.Los Angeles Post Punk. Smell the nihilism, enjoy the tunes.We Are Respectable Negroes by Chauncey. Tastefully presented meditations on race.Lost Garden. Game theory, affordably priced.Copyranter. Making fun of commercials has always been a favorite pastime. Why did I start this menu metaphor anyway? It's seriously not working. It was a bad idea.DDS Translations. Not currently updating, but probably the only existing translation of the Digital Devil Story Japanese novel, so if you're that kind of person, there you go.Fashion and Action. Comics and Costumes.Cross-Up by Voltech. Contains game discussion, fiction, natural flavors, coloring, and awesome sauce.Shapescapes by Konstantine Paradias. A specialty from Greece! Science fiction, comics, and pontificating.Invisible Kidz by Gabriel. Portraits in art and text, in blue glaze with a little bit of bite.LoOaSt Character List by Tam. She's cooking up a new world. Please enjoy.

Stalkbox

Introduction of Sorts

I have had many names, in different times and places. They're not hard to discover; look in the Stalkbox if you're curious.

For the past year, I've been writing a novel in public. And I've finished!

You can read it, if you want, using the Archive widget below. You don't necessarily have to read it in order, but it begins on Leap Day of 2012 and moves forward from there. It ends in March 2013.

I really enjoyed that process; I might do it again, as soon as I've finished off a couple of smaller projects that are coming due. I do intend to do a revision pass and edit this into something more manuscript-like in the very near future. But for now I'm leaving this first draft up as it is, for people to enjoy, and for me to remember how it began.

For now, I'll place the occasional thought or musing here once or twice a week, just to keep the cobwebs from gathering.

In the bar below, you can click on the RSS symbol to add this blog to your feeds, or click on Message in a Bottle to receive an email version, if that works better for you. If there's a blog tool that you think should be down there, by all means let me know.

Thanks for visiting this place, outside of the other places. Spend as much time as you like. We'll see you again... won't we?